Cannot run "chkdsk" on a VM

[NJKwork]

I have a Windows 2003 VM whose disk became corrupt recently when we had some fun with a "Falconstor" product. I get numerouse alerts in the event log similar to this "The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable. Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume \Device\HarddiskVolume1". I nearly filled my shorts when I recently tried to install SP2 on the server and it decided to puke half-way through because of the bad disk...buts that's another story

So, like I have done many times in the past with other servers (physical), I ran chkdsk and when prompted, allowed it to schedule the job to run on reboot (because of the typical message, disk being locked in use). However, it never runs the chkdsk. I watch it during the bootup using the VC console session, and it does not even try to run the chkdsk. It just skips it altogether.

I have never had problems running chkdsk in the past - it is just one of those things that works. Is there something with VMs that I am not aware of that prevents this from working? Is it a VMDK thing?

Any suggestions is appreciated.

Thanks!

SB

[DCasota]

Hi,

- Have you tried to start chkdsk in safe mode?

- Check out the result of sfc /scannow (system file checker).

Just a thought: If you have another VM you could add the disk from the first VM to this VM (+scan for hardware changes and give a drive letter in diskmgmt). With that you can run chkdsk directly. Afterwards you have to shutdown this "helper VM", remove the disk and put it back to the first VM.

[NJKwork]

No - I have not tried safemode (yet). I have also thought about the mounting to another VM. That was going to be my next step. I have never heard of SFC - I will have to look into that. This is one of those servers that cannot be brought down during the day (You don't see road construction happening at night; why do I have to do MY job at night! :smileyshocked:), so I am pretty limited in how and when I can "experiment".

But thanks for the tips. I really appreciated it.

SB

[Nicodemus555]

Slickbag.. what ever happened with your CHKDSK issue? How was it resolved?

- Nicodemus

[NJKwork]

Hello,

What I do now is stop and disable all HP agents and (in our case) SAV services prior to the P2V. I am not sure about the SAV stuff, but I do it just to be safe (Anti-virus = BAD!!!!). But the HP services I know for sure, when running, would conflict with the P2V process and corrupt some HP files causing errors when using my batch file to uninstall them. Since I started disabling the services prior to P2V, I have not seen this issue come up again. I manually re-enable SAV after I know my new VM is running good.

SB

[NJKwork]

Ah crap - I thought I was responding to a different posting I had opened a few months ago (which mentions chkdsk in that thread too).

Sorry - ignore the previous post for this from me

SB

[NJKwork]

I have not resolved this problem yet. I am sick of working from home during evenings to do my job (and not getting paid for it). So I have not taken the time to schedule an outage for this server yet (it is my way of protesting!)

But my goal is to mount this on another VM and run a chkdsk against it that way.

SB

[hollowcl]

I had a similar issue and I chnaged my SCSI controller from a BUS Logic to an LSI Logic and chkdsk ran at the next boot.